


Inevitability

by myriada



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myriada/pseuds/myriada
Summary: He's not certain if he's the creator of his destiny or just a witness to it, but he does know that he wasn't meant to spend the rest of his life walking the beat on Mars, or even working with HUSTL, not when he has the chance to do something else. Somethingmore.Snapshots of the life Liam Kosta left behind.





	1. Home

In just under a day, Liam Kosta will go to sleep, and if all goes well he won’t wake up for six hundred years.

It’s still a thought that makes him feel like vomiting - even after all the training and the vids and the brochures he's read a hundred times over. He tells himself it’s anticipation, not dread. He’s said his goodbyes, packed his footlocker to within an ounce of weight specs, renewed his resolve.

After months of training, the Pathfinder had instructed them all to go home and make their final preparations. For Liam, that meant doing all the things he’d put off: sending off the car, saying his goodbyes, moving back into his parents’ house.

He hadn’t been too keen on spending the last nights he had on Earth alone in his own one bedroom flat, but more than that he wants to remember everything he can about this house and the people who raised him in it. So he finds himself wandering the house in his last night there, taking in all the small details.

There are eight steps between the living room and the kitchen. He takes each step slowly, memorizing the way the room looks each step of the way.

The curve in the couch cushion, worn down by years of his father sitting in the same spot.

The enormous holo clock in the living room that his mother had been talked into buying on the Citadel.

The dent in the marbled coffee table from the first time Liam had modified a jump jet.

He wonders what it will all look like in six centuries.

 _Anticipation_ , he reminds himself, _not dread._

* * *

 He’s surprised to hear voices escape from the kitchen, hushed and urgent.

“…always told him he could do anything, didn’t we, and now he’s off to live on some godforsaken rock and he’s still so optimistic he thinks it’s a bloody _opportunity_.”

“Maybe it is.”

“I didn’t even study law until after Liam was born, Jo. How’s he supposed to know at his age what he wants to spend the rest of his life doing? He can find whatever he’s looking for here.”

“And what if it’s this? What if this _is_ what he was meant to do? It’s not like he can sign up again next year.”

“He’d never know. He won’t even live to hear the first transmission back. Just like we won’t.”

“He isn’t our little boy anymore. This is Liam’s decision, and he’s already made it.”

“Six _centuries_! And that’s if everything goes right. We’d never see him again. He’d be gone. As good as dead.”

“Don’t, Calvin. It’s too late to change anything.”

“Our only son.”

“ _Don’t_.”

For half a second Liam considers sneaking back upstairs like when he used to come in after curfew. He’s almost certain he remembers exactly where to walk on each step to make a silent exit, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to live with himself later.

Even so, it’s a few more seconds before he gathers the courage to slide open the door.

In the warm artificial light of the kitchen, his parents pretend they’re in the midst of a perfectly normal midnight chat, which is bad enough - but his mother wipes her eyes quickly and smiles shakily like she wasn’t crying, which is worse.

“Liam,” says his father, his voice hoarse. “Did we wake you?”

“Not getting much sleep tonight anyway. Got to figure I’ll have plenty of time to catch up, right?”

He wants to swallow the words as soon as they fall out of his mouth. _Stupid, Kosta. Stupid_.

His mother’s chair scrapes along the floor as she stands, padding over the kitchen floor to him. _Gray tiles_ , Liam notes, consciously committing that detail to memory even though he knows this kitchen like the back of his own hand. _Twenty across. A chipped one near the stove_. She reaches up to press a hand to both sides of his face.

“I love you.”

He had been taller than her by the time he was a teenager, but she suddenly looks frail. Someone new, someone he doesn’t know, crushed smaller by grief. “I know, mum.”

“When you were young, back when I used to take you to the Citadel, you used to climb on the Presidium railings to look at the lake. No matter how many times I yelled at you for it, you insisted on being a hellion.” She squeezes his cheeks before stepping back and wipes her eyes before her tears can fall. “Once, I lost track of you. I was so certain you’d fallen. I went under the railing looking for you, and just when I was beginning to panic I heard your little voice. You’d gone to say hello to an asari because you’d never properly met one before.”

“I remember.” He’s not sure if he actually remembers it, or if he’s just heard the story enough that it feels like memory.

“You’ve always been the thing I’m most proud of. You’ve brought me so much joy. And so much worry.”

His voice catches, twisting in his throat. “I know, mum.”

His father pushes his own chair back from the table harshly, making a noise halfway between a breath and a choked sob, and brushes past them both. The door slides closed behind him, too loud in the silence.

“You always said I just needed to find a purpose, right?” Liam attempts to smile, but fails. Miserably. “This is it. The chance of a lifetime. I have to take it.”

“Liam,” His mother says firmly, “you were the type of boy who saw an alien and your first thought was that it was a new kind of friend. If I were to choose the first feet on new soil, the one person I think could take strangers and make them work together…my boy would be the one. Your dad’s just - he’s not ready. He still sees you as his Sunday vid pal, truth be told.”

Liam manages a small smile at that, but he feels his own tears start, too. When he was a kid, his father would take him to see a vid every Sunday. Liam would get up early, pull up the day’s showings on a datapad, and wait for his dad to wake up so they could choose one to go see. As he’d grown older, the trips grew more infrequent. It had never been intentional, just one week after another passing him by - first with friends, then he’d been living on Mars, then traveling with HUSTL, but now he desperately wishes he’d found the time.

“I’ll go talk to him,” his mother is saying. “Try to get some sleep. You’ve a big day in front of you.”

“The biggest.” Before he turns back to the door, he takes a lingering look at his mother. He tries to imprint every detail: her old robe, white with little pink flowers along the sleeves. Dark curls shot through with silver. Checkered slippers on her feet. Her fingernails are painted the same shade of red she’s painted them for as far back as he can remember.

A red that will forever remind him of home.

* * *

Alec Ryder is not what Liam would call a sympathetic man, but all the same he allows his team to bring their families onto the docking bay to say goodbye while the shuttles are prepped to meet up with Ark Hyperion.

After boarding the ark, they’ll wake up in an entirely new galaxy, with everything they've ever known gone. No pressure.

Liam catches a brief glance of the Pathfinder walking with Harper, reading off of a datapad; his kids are talking to each other near a shuttle, and Fisher’s looking for something in a cargo box. The rest are already on board. Only Hayes and Liam are still saying their goodbyes, and if Ryder would let him he’d spend a year doing just that, but he knows he can’t.

“The guys from HUSTL will check in on you now and then, alright? Let them. And if you ever move, give them a forwarding address.” He searches his mother’s face. “Please.”

His mother nods mutely, fresh tears spilling from under her eyelashes, and Liam pulls her into a tight hug. He’s half surprised when his father hugs them both, and he feels for one split second as though he could spend the rest of his days in London if it means he wouldn’t have to break their hearts.

But he knows that he never could. He's not certain if he's the creator of his destiny or just a witness to it, but he does know that he wasn't meant to spend the rest of his life walking the beat on Mars, or even working with HUSTL, not when he has the chance to do something else. Something _more_.

“So,” he says after a long moment. “This is my stop.”

“So it is,” his father replies.

“Here.” His mother presses a small data drive into his hand. “Advice. Things we would have said, later -” She clears her throat.

“And photos. Family photos. And a few vids,” adds his father, his voice cracking halfway through. “All your favorites. I wanted…listen. Liam. We’re proud. You know that, right?”

He nods, afraid that if he says too much he’ll break.

 _Don’t forget me_ , he wants to say.

It’s a selfish, silly impulse, he knows it is; he’s the one who’s leaving and they’d never forget their own son, but all the same he wants to beg it of them. To know that he won’t be gone as if he’d never existed.

He settles for telling them he loves them. He tells them that they’ll meet up one day in the distant future and compare notes.

He tells himself it’s not just an empty platitude. It’s the truth.

It has to be.

 


	2. War

Calvin Kosta rubs his hands against the mild winter chill, looking up at the remains of the building he'd called home for two decades. 

He and Joelle had fled home shortly after the Reapers came. They’d been hoping other areas of London might have fared better, only to find that everywhere was a living, waking nightmare none of them could escape. 

Day by day, they'd fought to survive.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, until he was standing back where he’d started with a single, resolute goal in mind: to check the mailbox. 

* * *

The packages appeared in their mailbox once every handful of weeks, delivered by Liam's HUSTL team. Calvin had caught a glimpse of a person leaving them now and then - sometimes it was a woman with a head of black curls, and other times a man who always seems to wear the same blue knit hat.

The first package had arrived just after Liam left. Calvin let it sit on their kitchen counter, assuming he'd ordered something from the extranet that he'd forgotten about.

He later found Joelle listening to a datapad, one hand pressed to her mouth as Liam's voice filled the room, and then Calvin understood. It was just like Liam, wasn't it, to have gone and arranged something like that? _You have to think of the detours that might pop up,_ Calvin used to tell Liam when he hatched a plot like this: something kind, brilliant, impulsive and utterly daft. Liam saw A, and he saw B, so he created a road to get there. He never saw the potholes in between - although, Calvin supposes, Reapers are not a fair thing to expect anyone, let alone his unremittingly optimistic son, to have seen coming.

* * *

He feels himself let out a long breath he hadn't known he was holding when he finds a small metal box and datapad in the mailbox next to the door. He opens the package first, breaking the seal and snapping it open. Inside is a necklace - a simple blue gem, silver chain, exactly the kind of thing Joelle loves.

Would have loved.

Calvin turns the datapad over in his hands a few times before he's able to compose himself enough to play the message.

_Hey, mum,_ his son's voice says. _Happy birthday. Sorry I slept through it. I - bad joke. Sorry. Got you a necklace. It looked just how I remember the water at the beach. It's definitely too cold for a beach day this time of year, but you'll have this to remind you, just like it reminded me. Love you._

He squeezes his eyes shut, takes several deep breaths, and then plays it again. Calvin's not sure how many times he listens to the message just to hear the sound of his only child's voice, but at some point he looks up at the remains of his home and feels gratitude wash over him.

Joelle is gone.

The life he'd known is gone.

But Liam is not.

Jo had always been his more rational half, but now he's absurdly grateful that she'd been wise enough to see a better future for Liam when all Calvin could see was the one being taken.

He looks at the necklace in his palm. _Too cold for a beach day this time of year,_ Liam had said, but the beach seems about as good a place as any.

* * *

He walks for hours among hollow buildings before an Alliance patrol finds him. The officer seems confused when Calvin tells him he's headed to Hastings.

"It could take you days."

Calvin shrugs. "Best be on my way, then."

"But there's nothing left," the man says.

"The Channel's still there, isn't it?" He asks.

"I don't...well, I suppose it must be."

“Then I have something to take care of.”

They drive him most of the way there in their shuttle, and the officer asks again if he's sure this is where he wants to go. He nods. He knows where he's headed, and he's making a road to get there, detours be damned.

* * *

Calvin stops just before where the waves lap the shore to unlace his boots. He doesn't remember the last time he took them off for any significant amount of time; the Reaper creatures gave no thought to day or night, so he and Joelle had taken to sleeping in their shoes in case they'd have to run.

He carefully rolls up his pant legs and wades in. The air is at best chilly, and the pebbles on shore beneath his feet were cold, but the water is frigid. As his legs begin to tingle he wonders if perhaps it's even dangerous, but he wouldn't know - a law degree didn't give him much in terms of survival training.

It's simply a relief to stop running.

He thinks of his parents, who'd refused to ever move from their home in Cardiff, even when Calvin and his sister had moved out. Even when developers who wanted the land had offered them a huge sum of credits. Even when the Reapers came.

He thinks of Joelle, who died the day the Citadel appeared in the sky above London. They had been looking for food in an abandoned grocer's when the building began to collapse. One moment, his wife of nearly three decades had been turning to face him, half a smile on her lips as she’d held up some food she’d found, and the next she was simply gone as the floor fell through.

* * *

It wasn't Joelle that Calvin thought of as he desperately dug for her, cutting his hands on broken metal and plaster.

He would think of her almost constantly afterward, obsessively trying to remember the small details: the day they'd met through mutual friends at a cafe on the Citadel, she'd worn a red jacket. It matched the color of her fingernails. The day they'd married, Joelle beaming at him in her mother's wedding dress. Jo holding their son, looking down at his ugly, twisted, perfect face as he cried. The big moments, and a thousand ordinary moments throughout their lives together that were suddenly made precious.

But it wasn't Joelle he thought of, not then. It was Liam. Liam adored his mother, and Calvin owed it to his son to make sure that she stayed safe.

* * *

Standing waist-deep in the water, he thinks of his little boy who cared too much, of peals of laughter along this very beach, of the young man Calvin had been so proud of and the old man he'd never know.

Carefully, Calvin extracts the necklace from his pocket. He looks at it for a moment before he lets it slip through his fingers - a quick glimmer of blue, and then it's gone.

"Goodbye, Jo," he says. His legs are utterly numb, and now he's fairly sure that if he let himself float here, he could die in this water. It seems peaceful enough.

_There's nothing left here for me_. A father without a son, a husband without a wife.

He imagines what Liam would say to that: _Until you find what you're looking for, looking is something._

"I'm sorry," he says to the water.

The water makes no reply.

Groaning, Calvin forces one numb leg in front of the other until he's on the ladder again, then lays against the rocky shore, looking up at the silvery clouds above him in the sky.

* * *

 He's nearly asleep when someone speaks. A woman's voice. American accent. "Sir? Are you alright?"

Her face appears in the sky above him, upside-down as she stands over his shoulders and looks down at him. She's bundled up, but her head is bare, hair shaved close to her scalp. Ash and dirt are streaked across her face. _Some sort of crisis response team_ , he thinks. He knows the look well enough. Concerned, willing to do whatever it takes to drag him back from the brink, but not attached. That's where Liam always struggled.

"I don't know," he replies.

* * *

 She takes him back to a shuttle near the road, where she introduces herself as Hannah Caplan and offers him a blanket.

"We have to wait. I have two others with me," she tells him. She points toward the road. "They're still sweeping the houses up that way. Then we can take you to one of the Alliance refugee camps."

He doesn't think he could bear another night of living in an unfamiliar place. He'd been so sure he wanted to leave behind his empty house - a house filled with a hundred thousand reminders of his own failures - but suddenly he wants nothing more than to go back to what few recognisable things he has left.

"Maybe you could drop me at home instead," he suggests, as if she were a cab driver instead of part of a search and rescue outfit.

She doesn’t ask where he lives. "If you're sure," she says.

"I'm sure."

* * *

The other two arrive half an hour later. A woman with a long brown braid.

A man in a blue knit hat. 

And across from him, Hannah, who he's certain once had a head of black curls.


End file.
